(Somebody's) List of Best novels of all time

[mware]

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae HERODOTUS: Histories ARISTOPHANES: Clouds

Plus most of the works of Shakespeare

[Young Werther]

"The Red and the Black" - Stendahl

"The Sorrows of Young Werther" - Goethe, (Napolean's favorite. supposedly he is always pictured with his hand inside his lapel since he kept this book in his jacket pocket "close to his heart!")

"Th Foundation Series" - Asimov

[GSWarrior]

Notable omissions, IMO:

Rand, Arthur Koestler and Hesse.

[gate2wire]

Like Shakespeare and Homer.

Couldn't stand Tolstoy, Joyce, James.
Flaubert, just looking at it on my bookshelf bores me.

[kidd]

You have to get down to #14 (Huck Finn) before you find one that's actually enjoyable to read.

[gate2wire]

"Rand, Arthur Koestler and Hesse."

Must admit I liked Darkness at Noon.

[Cyclopean Squid]

I disagree. War and Peace is awesome. I own many of the others in the top 13 but have yet to get around to reading them.

[Cyclopean Squid]

Darkness at Noon is, um, a No. 1 dystopia.

[Borges]

How can you not like Tolsoty at hi best. War and Peace and Anna Karenin are like Life is writing itself. I'm not counting the philosphical drivel in the former which is easily skipped.

[#1CTYankee]

Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury, the first book I was assigned to read in school that I actually read.

[Borges]

You don't think Dickens or Austen are enjoyable to read?

[gate2wire]

"Notable omissions, IMO:"

Just noticed- No Solzhenitsyn either.

[Cyclopean Squid]

And the lame proto-Marxist essay at the end of War and Peace is also best left unread. But the novel itself is top-tier. How can anyone not be a fan of Pierre?

[Hemingway's Ghost]

For the record I read and enjoyed Ulysses.

You're the only one, my friend!

Dumas at 98 is unacceptable. The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers should be in the top 20.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Good: Only 1 Hemingway

How dare you!

[Cyclopean Squid]

I tried to read Ulysses but gave up after about 50 pages. It sounds like I'm in the mainstream there.

I'm reading the Count of Monte Cristo now. Love it, even if the Count is even more far-sighted and masterfully manipulative than the Rove of DU's nightmares.

[RabidBartender]

Have another drink, you. On the house.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I certainly don't agree with the whole list, but it's scary how many of them I have actually read....And how many of them I consider highly overrated.

[xcullen]

Beat me to it

[Borges]

Your tagline is a good one line summary of all the philosophical chapters in War and Peace! They say it's a novel about the fact that life goes on despite novels.